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Friday, March 23, 2012

Quiet

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

I guess, then, there is a season to be quiet. Quiet. An odd concept in our culture. A time to lay on a bench, in the middle of the woods, alone, being quiet and waiting to hear the voice of God.

Quiet enough to hear the squirrels and the chipmunks rattle the leaves; quiet enough to hear the flapping of the wings of a flock of Sand Hill cranes; quiet enough to hear the mosquitoes buzzing in March, and quiet enough to hear God whisper, "Just trust me."

This is what the Lord says," In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength." Isaiah 30:15

I walked through the woods, and proclaimed my trust. I cried the tears, and proclaimed my trust. I accepted the gifts and the prayers, and proclaimed my trust. I gave up my plans, and proclaimed my trust.

I will tear down the wall you have covered with whitewash and will level it to the ground so that its foundation will be laid bare. Ezekiel 13:14

Pain has a way of laying flat the flimsy walls that we build. Grief batters against the soul again and again, challenging the construction of who we have built God to be; this God that sits enthroned in His glory as we struggle along in our flesh.

He will accept nothing less than to have His children acknowledge who He really is. He will continue the refining until all falsehood is removed.

The tearing down process is exhausting. God strips us bare of any false beliefs until only the foundation is left, the true foundation of His character as laid out in Scripture.

And then the rebuilding can begin.

The call to read the words in the book of Ezekiel 5-15 this morning came as an answer to many prayers: prayers for a glimpse of God's glory, prayers for sustainence, prayers for my will to be truly yielded to God's will.

But Ezekiel wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting visions of heaven, the great hope of a gracious God, gentle leading by a kind Savior. Not my own sins revealed through the lives of the Isrealite's. Not a humbling of who I am. Not the acknowledgment that I really don't understand just who God is and what He's doing, let alone trying to define eternity and the glory to be revealed.

How do you wrap your brain around the concept of death?

I look at old pictures and see physical evidence of my son. Yet, he's not here anymore.

Theology tends to get twisted and warped as we walk the hard roads of suffering, and our once rock-solid doctrines can begin to take on a form of their own. Eternity seems to be no closer than it was yesterday, if it really ever will begin. God's glory has no definition that the brain can comprehend. And Heaven? It tends to evaporate into an unattainable destination that seems somedays like it may never come.

But it does come; it has come. The reality is too raw many days. But how? Where? Why?

This God, who's thoughts are higher than our thoughts as far as the earth is from the sky, this God that refuses to be put inside our pretty little boxes, has a way of destroying our flimsy white washed walls.

The foundation is laid bare through suffering so that all will be built on His truth, for His glory.